In essence, Nyms blow up Bitcoin addresses into full-on landing pages, complete with a custom URL and a profile of whatever identity a user wants to attach to a wallet.

By the way, the word “Nym” comes from the Greek word for “name” and is a key component in words such as “pseudonym” and “anonymous.” This literally lets you give your Bitcoin address a name, and maybe a personality.

“[I]t’s a place on the Internet where you can make a sales pitch for what you are offering, link to your other public profile pages and much more,” the post reads. “We will show your verified email and twitter handles—if you wish—and of course, there is a profile picture (avatar image).”

An example is illustrative: Here is Bitcoin Not Bombs’ Nym. You see that it has all the major components of a social media profile: an avatar, a description, and links to other social media identities.

Coinkite says these landing pages could be ideal for non-profits seeking donations.

Nyms can also be useful for compartmentalizing your wallets and your online lives, Coinkite points out. A user could have a professional Nym and a personal one. Funds sent to either could then be forwarded on to “a P2SH address, cold storage wallet, an exchange, or another bitcoin wallet,” Coinkite says.

A Rose By Any Other Nym

But what Coinkite is really doing here is putting a familiar interface on top of Bitcoin. We’ve seen a few companies add this social layer to cryptocurrencies in the past months. OneName.io comes to mind, as does the way Stellar allows new users to create personas on that network.

The primary benefit this social layer adds for a lot of people will be a better user experience. Instead of sending bitcoins to an illegible mess of alphanumeric characters, Coinkite users can now send money to much more legible avatars such as BTCCanada or saffron_bacchus [NSFW].

That legibility could give many users confidence that they were sending money to the right address. Coinkite also has a feature where Nyms can be starred for recurring payments.

Coinkite says its API also supports the Nyms feature.

Anyone interested in checking out the new feature can check out Coinkite’s Nyms main page and FAQ.

Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones: